The US government has authorized limited re-exports of foreign crude to Europe for the first time in years

As political pressure mounts in the US to lift the country’s decades-old crude oil export ban, Reuters reported yesterday that the US government has recently authorized limited re-exports of foreign crude to Europe for the first time in years.

Photo by Dru Oja Jay, DominionA study, published on Monday says emissions of certain hazardous air pollutants from the tar sands have been greatly underestimated.

According to data the news agency obtained via Freedom of Information requests, the Department of Commerce granted two licenses to export crude to the UK last year and another two to Italy.

When the devastating floods affected Colorado earlier this month, critics of the fracking industry were quick to point out that the number of inspectors was totally inadequate for the task of inspecting the damaged wells.

They highlighted how Colorado only has 17 full time oil and gas inspectors, for a state that has some 50,000 oil and gas wells.

It seems that company has been dumping oil from its Mayflower spill in a wetlands area after all

When news emerged last week that Exxon had surprisingly secured a no-fly zone over the area surrounding its 150,000 gallon spill in Mayflower in Arkansas, most people thought that here was Big Oil up to its tricks again trying to deliberately stop the public and press from seeing the extent of the destruction from the spill.

Photo courtesy Tar Sands BlockadeNOTE: Timestamp incorrect, added automatically by camera. This photo was taken just before sunset on Saturday, April 6, 2013. More images here.

So activists from Keystone XL Blockade decided they should go and investigate. They heard rumours that Exxon was… more

Offer made the same day Peru declared a state of emergency in its part of the rainforest

If we are serious about weaning ourselves off our addiction to fossil fuels, then the most obvious place to start is where its ecological and cultural impact is greatest: the Arctic, the tar sands, and the Amazon.

The battle for oil in the Amazon has often been overlooked recently due to the fight to keep oil companies out of the Arctic. But the threat remains and is set to get much worse.

The US plans to open up 20 million acres in the Gulf for drilling, yet talks big at the Doha climate summit

On Monday at the UN climate talks in Doha, the US claimed credit for “enormous” efforts on climate change.

Jonathan Pershing, a senior negotiator for the US, said: “Those who don’t know what the US is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it’s enormous.”

Whether the US has taken enormous steps on climate change is open to debate. What we do know is that we have a newly re-elected President who in his acceptance speech said: “We want our children to live in a world without the destructive power of a warming planet”.